Philip William May (22 April 1864 – 5 August 1903) was an English caricaturist who, with his vigorous economy of line, played an important role in moving away from Victorian styles of illustration towards the creation of the modern humorous cartoon.

At the age of twelve, in Leeds, May became friendly with Fred Fox, whose father was the scenic artist at the recently opened Grand Theatre.

May had begun to earn his living in a solicitor's office; before he was fifteen he had acted as time-keeper at a foundry, had tried to become a jockey and had been on the stage at Scarborough and Leeds.

On his return to Europe he went to Paris by way of Rome, where he worked hard for some time, before he appeared in 1892 in London to resume his interrupted connection with the St Stephens Review.

that the extraordinary economy of line which was a characteristic feature of his drawings had been forced upon him by the deficiencies of the printing equipment of the Sydney Bulletin.

It was in fact the result of a laborious process which involved a number of preliminary sketches, and a carefully considered system of elimination.

In 1918, Percy Bradshaw wrote in The Art of the Illustrator that May "surely gave more magic to a single line than any draftsman who has ever lived, and he was unquestionably the creator of the simplified technique of modern humorous drawing".

Middleton and architect Sydney Kitson - the half-brother of Lord Airedale - successfully held an exhibition of May's original drawings and placed a memorial tablet at 66 Wallace Street, Leeds where May had lived.